WIll the United States Supreme Court Review Minnesota's Test Refusal Law?

As you are probably aware, the Minnesota Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in the Brooks case. For newcomers, the Brooks case is the Minnesota Supreme Court's first chance to apply the holding in Missouri v. McNeely to a Minnesota DWI case. One question the Court is being asked to answer is, "are Minnesota driver's truly consenting to DWI searches when refusal to consent is treated as a separate crime?"

One fact we've kept relatively quiet is that we have a petition pending before the United States Supreme Court asking that exact same question. The highly prestigious SCOTUS Blog just listed our petition, in the case of Peppin v. Comm'r of Pub. Safety, as one of their "petitions to watch."

We know better than most that the odds of the United States Supreme Court accepting review of a case is very, very slight. However, in the Peppin case we have a reason to be at least a little optimistic that the Supreme Court will grant review - they already ordered the State of Minnesota to file a response to our petition. Opposing parties rarely file responses to petitions, and the State did not originally file one to our petition; however, it is incredibly rare for the SCOTUS to accept review of a case unless a response has been filed, meaning that at least one Justice felt it was appropriate to order a response from the Minnesota Attorney General's Office.

The Justices will decide the fate of the Peppin case at their September 30, 2013 Conference. If the petition is granted, it would be a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our firm to be able to argue a constitutional question of such incredible importance before the highest Court in the land. We sincerely hope that our petition is granted . . .but even if it's not, we still have every intention of arguing against Minnesota's practice of coercing consent from its citizens for each and every one of our clients.